


Something Clever

by Velundr



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: M/M, Soulmates, tumblr backfill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 13:38:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17023614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velundr/pseuds/Velundr
Summary: Cloud has the entirety of Loveless written on his back.





	Something Clever

They were almost artistic, the words down his back.

Cloud hadn’t noticed when they’d appeared, tiny lines fading in one by one, in a near perfect script, neatly paragraphed along his shoulder blade. At ten years old Cloud had little interest in his back and had just reached the age of being appalled by the very notion of his mother wandering in on him changing and half dressed, and so with the only mirror available to him high and small above the bathroom sink he couldn’t say when the words began to darken. It was only when he got hurt playing on the trails outside of town that he clambered up onto the little counter to inspect the damage, hoping to not have to let his mother know what he’d been up to, that he saw it.

It was long. Longer than almost any soul mark he knew and he wondered if that was why it was small enough that he could not hope to read it in the mirror. He’d seen other marks – on arms and legs and necks and anywhere bare of hair – and some could even be read at a distance. But he wanted to know what his said.

And that was how Claudia found him, sitting on his bed with her pilfered ancient instant camera held precariously behind him. She fondly called him daft, took the pictures, and chewed him out for playing too rough.

Later, when his cuts were tended and the pictures as clear as they would ever be Claudia helped him transcribe the neat text, though they could not replicate the twists of the fine lettering: delicate slants and emphasis that somehow captured quiet nuance and tone. When the war of the beasts brings about the world’s end…

“What does it mean, mama?”

“ ‘Fraid I don’t know much about poetry, my Nebel,” Claudia apologized, “but I’m sure we’ll find someone who does soon enough.”

‘Soon enough’ lasted nearly three years as it turned out that no one else in Nibelheim cared much for poetry either. Cloud nearly found it himself after he took to picking up any book of poems that came into town. After all, if his soulmate liked poetry enough that they’d manage to recite an entire work – passionately even – before anything managed to interrupt them then reading up on it was the least he could do. It wasn’t his favourite subject, but he learned a certain appreciation for it.

“You a fan of Loveless?”

Cloud started from where he was thumbing though the General Store’s small shipment of paperbacks in long established routine. There were three contenders that week and he’d likely buy them all regardless of them containing what he wanted. The owner ordered them for him now, mostly. Tifa confided that she’d likely found his mark terribly romantic. (So had Tifa, if she were honest. She was also a touch jealous – but only a little. Her own mark was the fairly common ‘It’s you!’ flowering on the inside of her wrist. There was no onus on her to reply, whereas as lovely as a personal recital sounded Cloud felt he had something to live up to.)

“A fan of what?”

“You know, Loveless?” replied Mister Berg, the lowlander who ran deliveries up the mountain. “There is no hate, only joy? You were just saying it?”

Cloud inhaled sharply.

“So that’s what it’s called!”

The third book proclaimed itself by the same name, and the words weren’t printed with the same love as those on his back would one day be spoken, but it didn’t matter: Cloud laughed brightly and buried his face in the pages:

“That’s it! That’s my mark- how much?”

The man shrugged with a kind smile, “Well, that one’s damaged- can’t really sell it, so you can have it if you want.”

Cloud’s brow furrowed. “It looks alright to me?”

“It’s defective, trust me, it’s yours. Shoo.”

“Wha-? Oh. Oh! Thank you!” Cloud launched at Mister Berg and hugged him just long enough to get out another “Thankyouthankyou!” and took off before the embarrassment set in.

It would be a few weeks before he could bring himself to speak to the man again, but by the time Cloud was ready to catch a ride out of town with him a few months later his outburst was all but forgotten.

He knew and had known since even before his words appeared that whatever his future was, it wasn’t in Nibelheim.

He joined the Midgar Infantry. He had vague notions of the spectre of SOLDIER, but he needed experience first and the infantry was one of the few places that would take a country boy like him.

Boot camp was awful. Miserable, wet, filthy and exhausting in body and in spirit, but it was three weeks and done and then they were off to work.

Cloud did well enough, he supposed, given he was younger than most and smaller than all, and that and his prickliness had made it harder to make friends at first, but then he’d mellowed until the older men were a little less fed up with him, and the newer recruits were closer and closer in age and looked to him. His COs even seemed to think they could make something of him, and this he suspected was what started landing him the missions with SOLDIER.

They’d been small at first. Monster hunting in the slums, then an excursion to the plains here and the mines there, and then anywhere under the sun and a few more places besides. When he was nearly seventeen he learned the leader of his most recent expeditions was a recruiting officer, and then there was mako testing and appointments and a new uniform. His mission roster hadn’t changed much afterwards, but it had gotten harder, and a little more again when at nineteen he made Second.

Or at least it seemed that way. There’d only been the one after all.

Cloud tried to vanish into his seat.

There was a cluster of towns on the Northern Continent with a monster problem, which being the North had rated a respectable contingent of Seconds and a handful of Firsts. It hadn’t really been that bad either, as missions went, if one discounted that anything involving a malboro was always that bad, and there had been several. Still, they came out alright, aside from the status effects most of them bore.

Cloud’s problem was not that he was Silenced, not a dangerous curse, but still one that his unit healer hadn’t been able to lift, nor had the one in the unit they’d partnered with. Those two had then considered their resources as they loaded into the back of the troop carrier and concluded that their best option was for one of the Firsts to lift it. Their problem was that they were unwilling to approach one of them.

Cloud’s problem was the Colonel Rhapsodos was apparently a stress reader.

“… Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess. We seek it thus, and take to the sky. Ripples form on the water’s surface. The wandering soul knows no rest...”

He read as quietly and as engrossed as the rumours said, and while his reading material supposedly changed from assignment to assignment he had favourites, Loveless crowning among them.

Hearing those words so lovingly said, in lilting tones Cloud could now hear before they were spoken now that he’d heard the voice, was a wonder. And he realized in wide eyed horror, the skin of his back warm and tight, that he’d still never quite figured what he would say to him. Even if he had it probably wouldn’t be appropriate, them sitting there in the back of a transport, surrounded by SOLDIERs, swimming in monster guts and with no way that the first thing out of his mouth wouldn’t be heard.

And so Cloud prayed for a flash of inspiration, or for his comrades to forget him in his silence or for them to simply fail to muster their voices until he could find the words he’d never really had a way with.

He was not so fortunate.

Rhapsodos was just finishing the last verse when Hewley, damn his attentive kindness, notice the healers’ shifty eyes and Cloud’s troubled look.

“Problem, SOLDIERs?”

Cloud frantically shook his head.

Hewley raised a heavy brow and faced the other unit’s healer.

Oinell pointed to him, “Strife here’s been Silenced, sir. We can’t break it ourselves.”

Cloud gave him a betrayed look. Oinell returned it with a puzzled one.

“Is that all? Well then,” Hewley lifted a hand, his bracer already aglow, “that’s an easy fix.”

The spell washed over him and Cloud sagged with a defeated noise, the first sound he’d made in hours.

“What?” Hewley frowned, “You can’t have wanted to be Silenced.”

Cloud sighed again and wished he could have just not answered.

“I was trying to think of something clever to say.”

And across the transport Rhapsodos choked and scambled:

“WhAt.”

Hewley blinked, a slow smile spreading on his face: “… Something clever?”

That was right wasn’t it? They were supposed to be friends, he might have seen Rhapsodos’ mark.

“In response to the entire poem on my back,” Cloud said. People were staring now. “Obviously didn’t work.”

Rhapsodos was standing over him now, all frenetic energy and startled, with a hint of something luminous behind his eyes.

“Oh, I don’t know – I’ve always rather liked it.”


End file.
